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TO THE ELECTORS OF CONNECTICUT, 

On the Political Issues of the Present Campaign. 



WHEiN we look through the long, dreary vista of human history, 
the eye seeks in vain for the government that promised to its people 
the peace, the freedom, and the protection wJiich our own Constitution 
has guaranteed to us and our posterity. In all the old governments, 
whether monarchies or republics, there were in them and in the con- 
dition of society out of which they were created, the elements of inev- 
itable dissolution. 

Our fathers, when they framed our Constitution, which they hoped 
would last forever, had before them the experiences of all other 
nations, the frame-work of all other governments, so far as history 
had preserved their records, and from them they culled with careful 
hand whatever seemed worthy of preservation in our organic law, and 
rejected whatever seemed worthless or destructive in other Constitu- 
tions. 

No men were better fitted for this most responsible duty. They 
were the representatives of independent States, whose foundations 
were laid amid the primeval forests of a virgin continent, — States 
which grew to their full stature under the chastening yet strengthen- 
ing influences incident to a condition of unremitting toil, constant suf- 
fering and ever-present danger. 

The representatives of such communities saw the necessity of a 
common bond of union in a written Constitution, and in its concep- 
tion they anticipated the danger of concentrated power on the one 
hand, and the equal danger of discord and division on the other; and 
they wove into a harmonious system of checks and balances the gov- 
ernment under whose protection we have enjoyed for nearly a century 
so nmch peace and prosperity, — a government as complete and per- 
fect in all its parts as human patriotism and ingenuity could devise. 

The Constitution gives us two houses of Congress instead of one. 
This was designed as a check upon the passions both of the represent- 
atives and their constituents, and to secure the utmost deliberation, 
and the most careful revision of public enactments. The Executive 
was made a coordinate branch of the government; and, as a further 
check upon rash legislation, he was given the veto power. To the 
same end it was required that no Representative should be less than 
twenty-five years of age, no Senator less than thirty, and no Presi- 
dent less than thirty-five. And to prevent all undue concentration of 
power, the Representatives were to be elected every two years, the 
President every four years, and the Senators every six years. Added 
to all these guards was a Supreme Court, with Judges appointed for 



life, to which the States or its citizens may appeal for the rectifica- 
tion of all possible abuses from the President, or Congress, or the 
States. 

Still further to protect the people from a despotic exercise of the 
Executive power, and to save the country from resorting for relief 
from insupportable tyranny to bloody revolution, the right of impeach- 
ment was given to the two houses of Congress. But this right was 
guarded against abuse, by requiring that one house should present 
charges, and the other should try the accused, who could only be con- 
victed by two-thirds of the Senate, — but not a Senate to which 
one-third of its members had been denied admission. 

Through four long years of toil, and blood, and tears, we struggled 
to maintain this government against desperate legions, armed and dis- 
ciplined for its destruction. In this hour of danger, the republican 
party rolled up its sectional banners, and called upon the citizens, irre- 
spective of party, to rally to the defence of the common flag of the 
nation, — to become the great party of the Union. They came from 
the hills and the valleys, from the mansion and the cottage, from the 
plow, the pulpit and the shop, and from every pursuit and profession. 

The spectacle was worthy of the cause, as grand and sublime as 
any of which history has made any record. The thought was never- 
theless a sad one, that our foemen were our own fellow-citizens, whom 
we must defeat, or perish amid the ruins of our government. Yet we 
were cheered by this conviction, that with the success of our arms, 
and the destruction of slavery, our triumph would be complete. We 
could and we would ask no more. Least of all was it in our hearts 
to exult over the fallen, — to add to the anguish of general bereave- 
ment and universal desolation, the fetters, the tyranny, and the insults 
with which barbarian conquerors crushed the spirits of the captives 
chained to their chariot wheels. 

Again and again, in every form of law and public proclamation, we 
assured these brave, but misguided men, that when they had laid 
down their arms, they should suffer no more than they had suflTered, 
but should be restored to their ancient rights and privileges, they 
guaranteeing that they would abandon the political heresy of the right 
of secession, which had led them into war ; the institution of slavery, 
which they had been taught to believe to be unsafe within the Union ; 
and agreeing to sustain us in discharging all our national obligations, 
while they repudiated their own. They complied with every condi- 
tion ; and it was our duty to receive them back, not merely to our 
Union, but to our confidence and regards — to assist them in repairing 
the ruin which we had made — to allow them to weep over and honor 
their dead — to accept, without distrust, their pledges made under new 
and bloody instructions, to maintain and defend the Constitution ; and 
in all respects to treat them as lost and as found, as dead and as alive 
again. 

It was not only magnanimity and humanity that demanded this 
treatment of the fallen, but our own self-interest and the permanent 
welfare and stability of the government. And what has been our pol- 
icy towards these fellow citizens 1 It has been that of William, the 
Conqueror, over his revolted subjects, softened in rigor only by the 



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influences of our modern civilization. We are told that that monarch 
" took such vengeance on the English, that all former fire and sword, 
smoke and ashes, death and ruin, were nothing compared with it. In 
melancholy songs and doleful stories, it was still sung and told by 
cottage fires, on winter evenings, a hundred years afterwards, how in 
those dreadful days of the Normans, there was not, from the lliver 
Humber to the River Tyne, one inhabited village left, nor one culti- 
vated field — how there was nothing but a dismal ruin, where human 
creatures and beasts lay dead together." 

Is the spirit of a portion of the North any less bitter and vindic- 
tive towards their brethren of the South, though it be not developed 
in the ferocities which marked the desolations of the Norman conquest '? 
Is that spirit to be longer cherished, which neither feels nor exercises 
sympathy for the fallen, nor remembers that ours is not a kingly gov- 
ernment, supported by bayonets and hereditary rights, but a govern- 
ment founded on the will, the affections, the equality and the man 
hood of the whole people ? If that equality in the States, which 
forms the golden chain that binds them to each other and to the Con- 
stitution, is to be rudely trampled under foot ; if the manhood of 
brave men, misled by false tuition in regard to their political rights as 
communities, and to the proposition whether their allegiance, in the 
event of a conflict, is due first to their State or to the national gov- 
ernment, is to be crushed out of them ; if their affections, which 
should be cultivated with the tenderness due to a humiliated and bro- 
ken-hearted people, are to be rudely repulsed ; are we not stamping 
upon their minds and hearts, the hatred of England towards their 
Noruian oppressors ; of Ireland towards the British government ; and 
of Poland towards their despotic masters '? 

We find no where in the history of the human race the good effects 
of harsh measures upon the defeated in civil or foreign wars ; but 
every where the effect of amnesty and magnanimity has been peace 
and contentment. The Roman conquests, in a darker age, are full of 
instruction to us who live in a more enlightened period. The van- 
quished Cilicians were covered with the protecting panoply of the 
conqueror against foreign invaders. Tarsus, its chief city, was by 
the government made a principal seat of science and the arts, and to 
it were attracted admiring strangers from every part of the world. 
St. Paul, whose birth place it was, was ever proud to declare that he 
was " a Roman citizen." 

When, in Ireland, auinesty has been proclaimed, and any sign of 
justice has been exhibited towards that oppressed people, they have 
been peaceful and comparatively contented, so that in the milder reign 
of Cornwallis, the cruelties of Cromwell were almost forgotten. 

But it is not alone for the South that we plead. It is for ourselves 
and our posterity. Injustice and bad faith in a government are sure 
to involve the whole country, sooner or later, in a fearful penalty. 
The crime of slavery, of which both the North and the South have 
been guilty, has drenched the whole land in blood, and the greater 
punishment has been inflicted upon the greater offenders. Let us con- 
fess our own wrong doings, and seek to heal the wounds which threaten 
the whole body, rather than longer aggravate them by measures 



•which never yet promoted the public good among a people worthy of 
a free Constitution. 

We see with alarm, Ihe rapid change in the form and spirit of our 
government, from a well balanced representative system, to a consoli- 
dated empire. Our veneration for the Constitution has been from 
the knowledge of the fact that its powers were so well defined and 
respected, that we have regarded it as the supreme defence of minor- 
ities, both of the States and of the citizens. It was formed when 
France was convulsed with the first throes of her bloody revolution. 

Unfortunately, the champions of French freedom had but one legis- 
lative chamber, and no supreme court of revision, so that the pas- 
sions of the people and of their representatives ruled the government, 
unchecked by the securities which our Constitution was designed to 
afford. And to add increasing velocity to the downward course of 
things, the Jacobin club, in midnight session, prepared the business of 
the chamber, and forced it to register its edicts. 

Our fathers thought they had guarded against all similar dangers, 
by their division of the powers of the government into several 
branches, as we have described, making, one a check upon the other. 
But the tendency of the Congressional caucus has been to sweep 
away all these constitutional barriers, and substitute for them the 
edicts of the caucus. As the Jacobin club was ruled by one man, the 
bloody Kobespierre, so Congress and the American people are ruled 
through the national caucus, by one master spirit, without any of the 
responsibilities that attach to a king or a president. Such appre- 
hensions will be treated by many good men as idle fears. So they 
always have been. It is too often the case that even good men 
continue to be blinded until their dangers have culminated in dis- 
asters, from which there is no escape but through long years of 
suffering. 

One of the bad signs of the times, is the spirit of intolerance 
which exists among ourselves, not merely towards the South, but 
towards each other. If we cry for mercy and magnanimity towards 
the fallen, we are met with the taunt of " rebel," " copperhead," and 
" sympathizer with rebellion." We are ruthlessly cast out of the 
party with which we have affiliated, and whose ranks are crowded 
with good men, but, as we believe, misguided men, as were those 
who were prompted by their prejudices and passions to attempt to 
destroy the government of their fathers. 

Kegarding both these classes as disunionists, with the difference 
that one class intended to be such, while the other, in the mass, 
have no such intention, we have " charity for all, and malice toward 
none." We do not forget that the good Lafayette, who stood in 
the French Revolution where we stand in this, only asking for mod- 
eration and forbearance, was denounced as a traitor to liberty, and 
only his Austrian captivity in the dungeon of Olmutz, saved hiui 
from decapitation by the guillotine. 

The Jacobins of France began their career with the loudest pro- 
fessions of love for popular rights, and even Robespierre declared 
his abhorrence of capital punishment, and his ardent desire for black 
suffrage in the French Colonies. Yet he soon reached that degree 



of ferocity which enabled him to declare the day of the massacres of 
August 10th as a day most glorious in the annals of the world, "for," 
said he, " there are periods in revolution when to live is a crime." 

Freedom for all races and all colors, was the motto of the revo- 
lutionists in the beginning of their career. Wi(h their success came 
first their cry of death to the king; next death to the nobles ; next 
death to the aristocrats ; then death to the priests ; then death to the 
rich ; then death to all opponents ; and finally death to neutrals who 
could not be friends. 

Human nature is substantially the same every where, only modi- 
fied by circumstances. Our fathers knew it when they gave us our 
Constitution, which has been regarded as the perfection of political 
wisdom, the crowning glory of their successful struggle for national 
independence. It should be revered as the Christian reveres his bible ; 
and every proposed amendment should receive the most mature dis- 
cussion and the most thoughtful consideration. And, above all, every 
invasion of its letter or spirit, should meet with the most emphatic 
protest and the most determined opposition, whether it comes from 
designedly bad men or infatuated good men. 

We regarded the late war as a defensive one entirely; not a war for 
conquest ; not a war to perpetuate party power, at a needless cost of 
hundreds of millions to the treasury ; not a war to keep under military 
rule from ten to twelve millions of people as justly entitled to their 
liberty under the Constitution as we ourselves ; not a war from which 
was to be engendered a hatred to last for generations, and to cul- 
minate in bloody conflicts among our innocent posterity ; not a war 
to excuse our disregard of the plainest provisions of the Constitu- 
tion, under pretence of protecting ourselves from the civil or mili- 
tary power of a crushed, desponding and broken-hearted people. 

The course of the present Congress of the United States is. endan- 
gering our own liberties in the future, as well as crushing the lib- 
erties of the South in the present. The law of reaction is univer- 
sal. Under the mad teachings of secession leaders, our government 
was in danger of falling to pieces, from the extreme doctrines of 
State sovereignty. The reaction has been, what the wisest of polit- 
ical philosophers fearecl, towards extreme centralism. When we have 
goaded the South into a desperate hatred of their oppressors, we 
shall have reason to fear either the disruption of the government, 
or another reaction back to a mere confederation or league of States, 
with a national government as contemptibly weak and inetflcient as 
that which was hastily formed under the pressure of the Revolution. 

W> are told that the voice of the people is omnipotent, and that it 
was clearly expressed in the Fall elections. We yield to none m res- 
pect for the popular will, when its final and deliberate decision has been 
manifested. We do not regard that verdict as final, or as deliberate as 
we should do if it were repeated, or had been given by larger majori- 
ties, or after the passions, heated by bloody civil war, had had longer 
time to cool. 

The people, we admit, have a right to change their form of govern- 
ment, and even to establish a monarchy, if they, in their deliberate 
judgment, shall deem it best. Our opinion is, that if the people. 



untrammeled by party associations and party demands, could to-day 
express their voice upon the policy of the dominant party, it would be 
in repudiation of that policy, by an overwhelming majority. We 
know that many voters have cast their ballots in this contest, on both 
sides, with doubts and misgivings, feeling that they must choose 
between seeming evils. 

We aimed to sustain the government and defend the Constitution 
against disunionists in time of war, regardless of party. We are now 
as earnest, in time of peace, to complete the Union for which so much 
precious blood was shed ; and we shall continue our labors to this end, 
equally regardless of party. 

The power of keeping out of Congress disloyal or other improper 
members, has existed, and still exists, and may be exercised withou 
limitation of time by each house of that body. If the insurgent citi- 
zens have not been sufficiently punished for their offences, they may 
be indicted and tried by hundreds or by thousands, until the most 
voracious appetite for vengeance is appeased. 

But we do protest against the longer dismemberment of our Union, 
on any pretence whatever. We protest against every attempt to oblit- 
erate or degrade a single State, or rob it of one prerogative which we 
claim as constitutionally our own. A State is not merely comprised 
of the people who are its present inhabitants — not merely of its pres- 
ent constitution and the laws upon its statute books — not merely of its 
territory, as bounded by geographical lines ; but it is built up by the 
labors and toils of generations. It belongs to the memory of the dead 
who contributed to its character and progress. It belongs also to their 
posterity, who have yet to impress it with their own history. It is 
not a thing of the hour, but a vital part of the Union, and cannot be 
trampled down but at the expense of the entire nation. The genera- 
tions of to-day may dishonor a chapter of its history, a period of its 
progress, but cannot rob the revolutionary fathers of the rights which 
they created in it, and which belong to all their posterity, to the latest 
period of its existence. 

The democrat and republican stood side by side on the field of 
battle, in the struggle against rebellion, neither caring to ask from 
which party the other came. In the same cause now, we stand with 
those of any party who, in this civil conflict, are contending for the 
Union ; and he who in such a cause is afraid of taunts and jeers, of 
the cry of "copperhead," "traitor" and "rebel sympathizer," which 
comes from those who have no better arguments in support of a dis- 
union policy and a military despotism, is unworthy of the cause we 
seek to maintain. To all such timid politicians, who dare not follow 
their convictions, we say, 

"Traitor! coward! turu and flee!" 

The honest but mistaken radical, like the honest but mistaken seces- 
sionist, is entitled to respect for the manly avowal of his sentiments. 
The confession of his error, whenever made, should be regarded as 
sincere. There is hope for all such. But " those who know the right 
and yet the wrong pnrsue," because their fears prevail over their pat- 
riotism, are unworthy of their political inheritance. 



The Democratic State Convention invited all wbo are in favor of 
the great principles which we have herein set forth, to meet with them 
in adopting a platform and nominating a ticket. We did not propose 
to interfere with their Convention, although thus invited ; but left 
them to take such action as they should deem proper, uninfluenced by 
us. They published their creed, which is such as we can fully 
endorse, and nominated an unexceptionable ticket. We have to make 
our choice between that ticket and those principles, and the ticket and 
platform nominated by the Republican Convention. 

We find upon the one ticket, the name of the Hon. James E. 
English for Governor. Tl^pugh a democrat, from his earliest youth, 
he, when the country was threatened with destruction by armed rebel- 
lion, was ready and anxious to unite with all of. any party who were 
willing to follow the flag of the Union until it became everywhere 
again the acknowledged emblem of our nationality. His private 
purse was ever open to the relief of our distressed soldiers, whose 
immediate wants were supplied by him, and who were thus furnished 
with the means of reaching their distant homes. So satisfactory was 
his course in Congress that it is believed that he would, at the close 
of his labors, have received, if he had not refused it, a unanimous 
re-election. Does any citizen of Connecticut, of any party, need to 
apologize for voting tor him t 

The Secretary of State, Mr. Pease, was never a member of the 
Democratic party. He voted for Lincoln and Johnson, and still main- 
tains the doctrines of restoration which are to be found in the procla- 
mations and other documents of these statesmen. But because he 
would not abandon them for the new principles of the dominant party, 
he was proscribed by them, and another was nominated in his place 
Do we need to apologize for voting for him 1 

Judge Mosely, the candidate for Treasurer, was a republican 
until he saw that his associates were following heresies as ruinous 
as those which he had opposed during the war, when he left them. 
Do we need any apology for voting for him 1 The remainder of the 
ticket is composed of men of pure character and liberal views, and we 
would not separate them from tlieir associates upon the same ticket. 

Much as we esteem the many who sustain the organization with 
which we have been connected, and of whose integrity and patriotic 
impulses we have no doubt, we have no misgivings in regard to our 
OW71 duty in the present crisis. We are truly and deeply alarmed for 
the fate of the country, now under the sway of an overbearing major- 
ity, (and a great majority is a misfortune to any country or to any 
party that possesses it,) and it should be our duty to labor unceasingly 
until more moderation is shown in the councils of the nation, and 
more toleration outside of them. , 

The men whose extreme doctrines and measures we oppose, rely 
chiefly for the success of their cause upon their industry and skill in 
inflaming the passions of the people with stories of outrages upon 
the defenceless freedmen and others in the South. If all we hear 
of such lawlessness and cruelty were true, it would hardly excite sur- 
prise among dispassionate men, who consider the natural efi"ects of 
civil war upon any people that have been the greatest sufi'erers from 




^ 014 075 877 

it. To these effects may be added the influence upon Southern soci- 
ety of the sudden overthrow of their slave system, which had been 
interwoven with every fibre of their social, civil and political exist- 
ence. To these influences must be farther added the discourage- 
ments arising from the bad faith of the government toward them, and 
the seeming hopelessness of their situation. From a people thus cir- 
cumstanced, what else than universal lawlessness or anarchy should 
be looked for ? Yet order generally reigns throughout the South. 
There is less oppression, violence and outrage than might have been 
expected, even if the representations of partizans were truthful state- 
ments. But it is well known to candid inquirers that falsehoods of the 
grossest character have been constantly and systematically fabricated 
and circulated for the purpose of securing party majorities in the North, 
and affording apologies for the harsh and despotic measures adopted 
by Congress for the government of the South. 

Let tlien all true Union men in our commonwealth unite to check 
the further progress of the spirit which threatens the eternal alienation 
of the divided sections of our unhappy country Thoughtful minds 
are anxious over the present situation and future prospects of our pub- 
lic affairs. Capitalists are sensitive and apprehensive of financial 
revulsion. Labor is crushed down under the heel of the merciless 
speculator. The public debt is being increased by hundreds of mil- 
lions, to pay, not tke wages of Western soldiers, but their bounties, in 
which New England soldiers are not allowed to participate. The 
national treasure is squandered for purposes even less commendable. 
The South is wholly paralyzed. Desolation is in all her borders ; and 
even her small capitalists dare not invest their money through fear of 
the confiscation now daily threatened in and out of Congress. 

Let us, then, fellow citizens, who dare to throw off the trammels of 
party, rise to the magnitude of the impending crisis. Let us fully 
realize that in this State we have now in our keeping the ark of the 
Constitution which we have solemnly sworn to defend against all 
aggressors, whether they come from the North or the South. Let the 
banner of our party be the flag of our common country, with every 
star once more glittering in its original lustre before it was tarnished 
by the smoke and stained by the blood of (;ivil war. Let the voice of 
our gallant State go forth, in emphatic tones, rebuking the intolerant 
and oppressive majority that now rules the nation with despotic sway. 
Let us bid the North and the South look up in hope for better days, 
when confidence shall be every where restored — when honest labor 
shall receive more than its daily bread — and when the whole nation, 
chastened by the sorrows of the past, shall unite in songs of patriotic 
thanksgiving over a united, prosperous and happy country. 
•> 
In behalf of the National Union Committee, 

JAS. F. BABCOCK, 
E. S. CLEVELAND, 
L. E. PEASE, 
HORACE SABIN. 
New Haven, March 15, 1867. 



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